E. Annie Proulx

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**Edna Annie Proulx**
Born:	August 22, 1935 (age 71) Norwich, Connecticut
Occupation:	Novelist

Edna Annie Proulx (pronounced /pru:/) (born August 22, 1935) is an American journalist and author. Her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994. Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was adapted as an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning major motion picture released in 2005. Brokeback Mountain received massive critical acclaim and went on to be nominated for a leading eight Academy Awards, winning three of them. She won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her first novel, Postcards. She has written most of her stories and books simply as Annie Proulx, but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.

1 Personal life and writing
- 1.1 Criticism of Academy Awards
2 Bibliography
3 Awards
4 Film adaptations
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Personal life and writing

Annie Proulx was born in Norwich, Connecticut to parents of French-Canadian ancestry. She graduated from Deering High School in Portland, Maine, then attended Colby College "for a short period in the 1950s." She later returned to school, studying at the University of Vermont from 1966 to 1969, and graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts in History in 1969. She got her Master of Arts from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal, Quebec in 1973 and pursued, but did not complete, her Ph.D. Starting as a journalist, her first published work of fiction is thought to be "The Customs Lounge", a science fiction story published in the September 1963 issue of If, under the byline "E.A. Proulx".^[1] She subsequently published stories in Gray's Sporting Journal in the late 1970s, eventually publishing her first collection in 1988 and her first novel in 1992. Subsequently, she has been awarded NEA (in 1992) and Guggenheim (in 1993) fellowships.

A few years after receiving much attention for The Shipping News, she had the following comment on her celebrity status: "It's not good for one's view of human nature, that's for sure. You begin to see, when invitations are coming from festivals and colleges to come read (for an hour for a hefty sum of money), that the institutions are head-hunting for trophy writers. Most don't particularly care about your writing or what you're trying to say. You're there as a human object, one that has won a prize. It gives you a very odd, meat-rack kind of sensation." [1]

In 1997, Proulx was awarded the Dos Passos Prize. Proulx has twice won the O. Henry Prize for the year's best short story. In 1998, she won for "Brokeback Mountain," which had appeared in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997. (The story has since become an award-winning 2005 movie, directed by Ang Lee.) Proulx won again the following year for "The Mud Below," which appeared in The New Yorker June 22 and 29, 1999. Both appear in her 1999 collection of short stories, Close Range: Wyoming Stories. The lead story in this collection, entitled "The Half-Skinned Steer," was selected by author Garrison Keillor for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 1998, (Proulx herself edited the 1997 edition of this series) and later by novelist John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century (1999).

Proulx's most famous critic is Brian Reynolds Myers, who attacked the writer extensively in his A Reader's Manifesto. Myers claimed that Proulx is purposely incoherent and allusive. He sees her as part of a problematic trend in American literature in which writers are praised simply because their prose is so difficult to understand. Countercritics, for instance, The Complete Review have complained that Myers has unfairly assumed that Proulx has a canonical status which she in fact does not enjoy.

Proulx lived for more than thirty years in Vermont, has married and divorced three times, and has three sons and a daughter (named Jon, Gillis, Morgan, and Sylvia). In 1994, she moved to Wyoming, where she currently resides, spending part of the year in Newfoundland.

[edit] Criticism of Academy Awards

After the film adaptation of Brokeback Mountain lost the Best Picture Oscar to Crash at the 2006 Academy Awards, Proulx published a screed in the British newspaper The Guardian of 11 March 2006, in which she lambasted the awards show. Brokeback Mountain had won most major awards (including the Golden Globe for best drama) in the lead-up to the Oscars, and Proulx's article seemed to suggest that it did not win at the Oscars due to homophobia, either directly on the part of the Academy, or because the Academy gave in to outside pressures. She further implied that the Church of Scientology influenced the decision.

Among other complaints, Proulx pondered whether Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of writer Truman Capote, though "brilliant," was in fact little more than "mimicry." She wrote that the Academy members were a "dim LA crowd," for whom the "atrocious" and "violent" Oscar-winning song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" was "a favorite," and that Crash was "a hit with the home team since the film is set in Los Angeles." Proulx referred to Crash as "Trash," and likened the evening to "a small-town talent-show night." She closed the article, "For those who call this little piece a Sour Grapes Rant, play it as it lays."

[edit] Bibliography

Sweet and Hard Cider: Making It, Using It and Enjoying It (1984), ISBN 0-88266-352-6
Heartsongs and Other Stories (1988), ISBN 0-684-18717-5 (reprint ISBN 0-02-036075-4)
Postcards (1992), ISBN 0-684-83368-9
The Shipping News (1993), ISBN 0-684-85791-X
Accordion Crimes (1996), ISBN 0-684-19548-8
Close Range: Wyoming Stories (2000, ISBN 0-684-85222-5
That Old Ace in the Hole (2002), ISBN 0-684-81307-6
Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 (2004), ISBN 0-7432-5799-5

[edit] Awards

Literary Awards and Prize Collections:

2004 — Aga Khan Prize for Fiction for “The Wamsutter Wolf”

2002 — Best Foreign Language Novels of 2002 / Best American Novel Award, Chinese Publishing Association and Peoples' Literature Publishing House (That Old Ace in the Hole)

2000 — WILLA Literary Award, Women Writing the West

2000 — Borders Original Voices Award in Fiction (Close Range, Wyoming Stories)

2000 — "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water," Best American Short Stories 2000

2000 — English-Speaking Union’s Ambassador Book Award (Close Range, Wyoming Stories)

2000 — The New Yorker Book Award Best Fiction 1999 (Close Range, Wyoming Stories)

1999 — "Half-Skinned Steer" inc. Best American Short Stories of the Century, ed. J. Updike

1999 — "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World," The Best American Short Stories 1999

1999 — "The Mud Below," O. Henry Awards Prize Stories 1999

1998 — "Brokeback Mountain" National Magazine Award

1998 — "Brokeback Mountain" inc. O. Henry Awards Prize Stories 1998

1998 — "Half-Skinned Steer" inc. Best American Short Stories 1998

1997 — John Dos Passos Prize for Literature (for body of work)

1994 — Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (The Shipping News)

1994 — National Book Award for fiction (The Shipping News)

1993 — Irish Times International Fiction Prize (The Shipping News)

1993 — Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction (The Shipping News)

1993 — PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (Postcards)

[edit] Film adaptations

The Shipping News was adapted to film by director Lasse Hallström in 2001, starring Kevin Spacey as protagonist, Quoyle.
Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee and starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, based on a story of the same name in Proulx's collection of short stories, Close Range, was released in December 2005.